The Higgs mass range from Standard Model false vacuum Inflation in scalar-tensor gravity

TL;DR

This paper proposes a scalar-tensor gravity model where the Higgs false vacuum drives inflation, predicting a narrow Higgs mass range consistent with observations, testable at the LHC.

Contribution

It introduces a novel inflationary scenario based on the Higgs false vacuum within scalar-tensor gravity, linking Higgs potential features to cosmological observations.

Findings

Predicts Higgs mass around 126 GeV with small uncertainty.

Links Higgs potential at false vacuum to density perturbation amplitude.

Suggests testability of the model through collider and cosmological measurements.

Abstract

If the Standard Model is valid up to very high energies it is known that the Higgs potential can develop a local minimum at field values around $10^{15}-10^{17}$ GeV, for a narrow band of values of the top quark and Higgs masses. We show that in a scalar-tensor theory of gravity such Higgs false vacuum can give rise to viable inflation if the potential barrier is very shallow, allowing for tunneling and relaxation into the electroweak scale true vacuum. The amplitude of cosmological density perturbations from inflation is directly linked to the value of the Higgs potential at the false minimum. Requiring the top quark mass, the amplitude and spectral index of density perturbations to be compatible with observations, selects a narrow range of values for the Higgs mass, $m_H=126.0\pm 3.5$ GeV, where the error is mostly due to the theoretical uncertainty of the 2-loop RGE. This prediction could be soon tested at the Large Hadron Collider. Our inflationary scenario could also be further checked by better constraining the spectral index and the tensor-to-scalar ratio.